Sketching it out

The sketchbook is a sort of artistic ground zero; a starting point where artists embark on a path towards a final piece, or use the form of drawing as an end in itself. Frustrated artists turn back to the sketchbook to start over. Artists who are on a roll refer to old sketches and create new ones to continue to expand ideas.

It is with this in mind that I take note of Antarctica Dispatches, a project by Simon Faithfull. He’s currently travelling with the British Antarctic Survey, and using a Palm Pilot as a sketchpad, uploading a new picture each day. The sketches are a bit crude, and very spare, with much white space surrounding few details. The drawings are compelling because the “imperfections” in the method of working with the Palm Pilot highlight the difficulties in the process of drawing to accurately portray a certain reality or sensibility. It might seem nearly impossible to represent or express the vast emptiness of Antarctica, and so it’s poetic to limit one’s tools to the point where it actually is impossible, and submit yourself to the process of rendering fragments of this imposing territory on the tiny screen of a Palm Pilot.

I find this project interesting for its imposition of severe limits on a very open, basic artistic technique, to represent a difficult subject. I’m reminded of Glenn Gould’s radio documentary, The Idea of North, wherein Gould explores his fixation on the stark Canadian North by applying the musical technique of counterpoint to create a dense thicket of voices describing their experiences of the North. These territories of ice that occur throughout the globe seem to inspire artists to rethink fundamental forms: in Gould’s case, the radio documentary, and in Faithfull’s case, the sketchpad. This stark geography begs fundamental questions, and artists must respond radically.

In a recent article on BBC News, artist David Hockney said: “It is time for us to look at how images are made, to place greater value on drawings and draughtsmanship.” (emphasis mine). Like the emptiness of the North, the blank piece of paper and the silence of the recording booth offer a blank slate upon which we can examine fundamentals. This barrenness offers space for the magical moment of creation, when something comes of nothing.

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